"The miserable attempt to reconstruct the _Maison Rouge_, that mixture of the military men of the old monarchy and the soldiers of the new empire, only augmented the evil. To suppose that veterans famous on a hundred fields of battle should not be shocked at seeing young men--brave without doubt, but for the most part unaccustomed to the use of arms--to see them wear, without having earned or deserved, the marks of high military rank, was to be ignorant of the first principles of human nature."--Vol. vi. p. 311-313. [3] Having ourselves seen the Old Guard on this trying occasion, we can vouch for the general fidelity of Chateaubriand's narrative. These observations of Chateaubriand's are well founded, and the last, in particular, is very important; but it may well be doubted whether, by any measures that could have been adopted, the support of the army could have been secured, or the dynasty of the Bourbons established on a secure foundation. It was the fact of their having been replaced by the bayonets of the stranger which was the insurmountable difficulty; it was national subjugation, the capture of Paris, which had for ever stained the white flag. This original sin in its birth attended the Restoration through every subsequent year of its existence: it was the main cause of the revolution of 1830, and operated with equal force in bringing about the still more fatal one of 1848. Impatience of repose--a desire to precipitate themselves on foreign nations--an aversion to the employments and interests of peace, were the secret but principal causes of these convulsions. If either Louis XVIII. or Louis Philippe had been young and warlike princes, and the recollection of Leipsic and Waterloo, of the invasions of France, and the double capture of its capital, had not prevented them from engaging in the career of foreign warfare; if they had been enterprising and _victorious_, they would have secured the unanimous suffrages of the nation, and continued the honoured possessors of the throne of France. But this dazzling though perilous career was denied to Louis XVIII. To him there was left only the difficult, perhaps the impossible task, of reconciling irrevocable enmities, of closing irremediable wounds, of appeasing inextinguishable mortifications. They have been thus set forth in the eloquent words of genius:--